Читать книгу The Calendar History of Kiowa Indians (Illustrated Edition) - James Mooney - Страница 33

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As the names Aliatan and Tetau here quoted from Lewis and Clark, with their variants, have been the cause of much confusion in our western tribal nomenclature, some explanation will not be out of place. Although so unlike in appearance, these appellations are really but different forms of the same word. The Ute of the mountain, region at the headwaters of the Platte and the Arkansas, being a powerful and aggressive tribe, were well known to all the Indians of the plains, who usually called them by some form of their proper name, Yútawáts, or, in its root form, Yuta, whence we get Eutaw, Utah, and Ute. Among the Kiowa the name becomes Íătä(-go), while the Siouan tribes seem to have nasalized it so that the early French traders wrote it as Ayutan, Iatan, or Ietan. By prefixing the French article it became L'Iatan, and afterward Aliatan, while by misreading of the manuscript word we get Jatan, Jetan, and finally Tetau. Moreover, as the early traders and explorers knew but little of the mountain tribes, they frequently confounded those of the same generic stock, so that almost any of these forms may mean Shoshoni, Ute, or Comanche, according to the general context of the description.